It would have to boil down to storyline, character customization, levelling system and freedom of choice. Of course molding capabilities as well that's an obvious one though...I don't think so many would still be playing without mods

1. Make the leveling system like Morrowind.

2. Uniqueness - Make each dungeon unique, on Oblivion they all just looked the same. And the landscape was quite similar except the north was covered in snow. Make unique landscapes, kind of like Morrowind, but make them bigger and better.

3. Better dialogue - Different npc's have unique dialogue. Also more topics to talk about.

4. More animation effects - throw objects like rocks or sticks so guards will look because of the sound. Maybe even being able to set buildings on fire by throwing torches onto them, or doing a certain amount of damage to them using fire spells.

5. Weapons - Bring back weapons from Morrowind, but only bring back 1 or 2 of the throwing weapons, as I think 3 types is too many. Also, include rocks, branches, cutlery and other items as weapons. They won't do much damage, but it would be fun. Rocks and branches would be a little more damage than using your fists, and knifes could be a little worse than daggers.

I have a few more ideas so will quickly list them as they are short.
Open cities (has been mentioned by most people).
Morrowind style travel, e.g. Silt Striders and Boats.
Powerful spells that require a lot of magicka and take 5-10 seconds to cast but are extremely powerful.

Okay, here's my top 5 (in no particular order):

Larger Cities: cities in Oblivion were far too small, with far too few NPCs. Cities should be like Assassin's Creed-size.

Amenities: Houses should have toilets, sinks, etc. and NPCs should use them. Call it a small thing if you will, but the lack of toilets is a real immersion-breaker.

Climbing: the whole world should be open to you, and that includes being able to use ladders, scale walls and so forth. Again, a bit Assassin's Creed-esque, but perhaps make it against the law to be on city rooftops, and so forth. EDIT: climb trees?

Magic: should be more involved than purchasing spells and pressing a button. Not quite sure what it should be, but spells should be learned instead of bought, and there should be an art to casting.

Combat: again, should be more involved than button-hammering. Different fighting styles, timed blocking, counter attacks, dual wielding, throwing knives, mixing weapon attacks with kicks/punches, actually viable unarmed martial arts, etc.

1 - Varied World, each region of the map (where ever it is located) should have a variety of cultural buildings and regions that have different meshes and textures like in Morrowind. I want to be able to look around and know where I am at, not look around and see the same types of trees and flora in the area that is suppose to be a rain forest in the area that is suppose to be a wide grassy plain.
2 - The Construction Set, it needs to be friendlier and allow for a wide variety of things to be easily modified. Make it possible for modders to recreate the other countries in Tamriel not released.
3 - A Wide Variety of Creatures, more creatures and creature variants makes the game more entertaining. It prevents the boredom of just walking around and getting attacked by a wolf every minute (like Oblivion). I want the fights to be more Morrowind like with variants of kwama, nix-hounds, netches, alit, ect. (although not these creatures unless you make the stupid mistake of making TESV in Morrowind again. Please don't).
4 - Better Equipment, more equipment variations like separate pauldrens and gauntlets and more artifacts with special history and uniqueness. I want region special armors and weapons like in Morrowind in TESV. P.S. Daedric, glass, and ebony are suppose to be rare and it is suppose to give you a sense of achievement when you find the piece you were looking for, and not just be given a set after killing a marauder like you have have been all game long.
5 - A Better Leveling System, I am not saying remove it, but it seriously needs to be reworked from that failure in Oblivion. I loved Oblivion, but after level 22 it seriously pissed me off. You need to have dungeons that are mostly static, creatures and npcs that are above and below your level, and still manage to have the ability to have fun playing at higher levels. Hard to understand and contradicting I know, but having everything completable at level 5 and everything insanely easy at level 25 makes the game seem more like a punishment for leveling up then a reward.

In order from most important to least, but all very important. I could continue this list to about 120 if I felt like it, which I kinda do, but won't.

What I would like:

• Better AI -No more walking into walls for hours on end-
  
• Crossbows -Maybe, could be interesting-
  
• Spears -Make them good, unlike on Morrowind-
  
• Changed levelling system -Enemies never get to things like Glass-
  
• Horses can go in towns
  
• Street Markets

A lot of great mentions so far. I think all of my wants have already been covered, but not in a single list.

1) Robust CS and increased modifiability. <--This is by FAR the most important to me. Some of the greatest things in either MW or OB were NOT put there by Bethesda.

2) Better leveling system. <--I think it needs a complete overhaul. I come from the old-school where NOTHING leveled with you but instead the better you got the more places you could go and the better loot you could find. Ultima 7 for example. It was THE open world for its time, you could go damn near everywhere from the very beginning, yet a huge chunk of the world was going to kick your ass if you did! On the other end of it, I think a skill based system leveling system would be a great thing. Think Ultima Online, but with more levels. I will explain below*

3) Either more voices or NO voices. Every Redguard should not sound EXACTLY the same.

4) Overall less good vs. evil and more gray areas. Moral ambiguity, if you will. I should be able to be morally corrupt yet still famous (not just infamous).

Ok. My idea for a leveling system:

You start out with x number of skill points to distribute any way you want with a cap on every skill of y number of points and a cap on TOTAL skill points of z.
--for example (and all these numbers are just that). You are level 1, fresh out of prison. You have 25 points to distribute among your skills. You have a hard limit in any given skill of 15 and a hard limit on TOTAL skill points of 100. So if you want 15 in blade and 10 in block, then go ahead. Or if you want 1 point in every skill, go ahead (as silly as that is). You can then, through use, raise any skills you want as long as they don't exceed 15, and as soon as you reach your hard cap of 100 TOTAL, you level up. Then your y and z variables go up. You can now have 35 points in any single skill and a hard cap of 200 total.
Two other things are important in this skill system.
1) No automatic leveling. You CHOOSE when you want to actually level up and raise your caps, not just by sleeping. I can keep the "level up" icon on my screen as long as I want and never raise to level 2/3/4 etc. unless I am ready.
2)To make it even more customizable, you can set each skill to raise or lower. Say you are at your hard cap of 100, yet you don't like the distribution of skills. I have alchemy at 10 and sneak at 5. I don't use alchemy anymore, so I lower that skill and set sneak to raise. Now I sneak my ass off and it slowly goes up and alchemy goes down. No other skills are messed with because they are set on lock.

This system adds an immense amount of customization of your character. If you want to role-play a renaissance man, go ahead and be "decent" at every skill, but a master of none. You want to be a pure warrior and pay someone else to make potions and repair armor, go ahead. Want to be a blacksmith or alchemist that has enough skill to get the ingredients you need? Make one!

My 2 cents...haha

Please tell me you're joking.

1) Leveling system- Different leveled creatures across the entire map. Bandits varying in strength.

2) Map Markers- Helpful yes, but an option to turn them off with the chance of getting more or less clear directions to travel their yourself and use your own initiative a lot more like Morrowind.

3) AI- Less stupid, don't kill themselves or get into pointless fights and also to be able to hold some semblance of reality.

4) Fast Travel- Perhaps gone?

5) More lore and history linking all we known about the elder scrolls. Cooler vampireness.

It is all about perspective.


:goodjob:


:P

1 . More Guilds and factions to join. The Arena is great but also need improvement. Jousting and/or other medieval sports would do great in Tamriel.
2 . NPC personalities. This really needs improvement. Ofcause every single NPC dosn't need a unique personality but it would be great if atleast the NPC's which is close to the player did.
3 . Werewolves and the opportunity to become one. Depending on the province, perhaps also Werebears, Werecrocodiles, Wereboars, Weresharks etc.
4 . More skills. Bring back Medium Armor and Spear. Axe, Short Blade and Long Blade needs needs their own skill again etc.
5 . Romances. I'm really starting to miss this in TES after ME and DAO. Ofcause it would require 2# to be fixed first.

1. NO LEVELING
2. Better combat. I would like a better dodging system that doesn't send you flying 5 feet away from your enemy, maybe even lock-on.
3. More creatures. I hate being attacked by rats and ONLY rats.
4. Parkour and climbing. This is very optional, but it would be a nice feature for acrobats and thieves. NPC could comment about it as well.
5. More vehicles and mounts. It would be nice to ride in a boat or fly on a dragon and such, heck, why not make split striders ridable if you hijack one.
6. More weapons/anything a weapon. It would be awesome to use a spear, but it would be even MORE awesome to try to defend yourself with a broomstick! It would be nice to have especially if your sword and shield broke! Same works for projectiles!
7. Crafting/combining. It would be nice to make your own weapons, but the main thing I'm drawing attention to is combining. Let's say you have a broomstick, a knife, and some adhesive. You can press a button and enter the combining menu. This menu would be a piece of paper. The player would then place the broomstick in the menu, flip it so that the bristles are at the bottom of the stick, put some adhesive on the bare end, select where the player would hold it and here you are, your very own, makeshift spear. this wouldn't be very powerful or durable, but the more you do this the higher your craftsmanship skill will be, and as a result, your new weapon/tool will be more effective.
8. More skills. Some suggestions are: weapons mastery (this skill will govern your base weapon damage, it will increase more if you use different weapons.), sneak attack (it increases your base weapon damage when you sneak attack, the milestones are: multiplier increased from 6 to 8, target will be frozen for one second after the first attack+ X8 multiplier with bow, you can preform an insta-kill attack with the bow and melee weapons, and you become invisible for four seconds after a stealth kill).
9. No leveling enemies. It's just stupid.
10. Level up perks. Basicly what you did with Fallout 3.
11. Evil ending. I may be a moralfag, but it's nice to know that it was ME who saved the world, and that it was MY choice.

sorry if it's 6 too many

1) Occlusion culling. My computer is admittedly a piece of crap, but I facepalm at Bethesda for their reliance on minimal LoD and a single fog render distance for their games' performance. Everybody else stopped doing that in 1999. Get with the program!

2) Minimal voice acting (a la Morrowind). Yes, I said it. I think Bethesda's annihilating their budget with excessive and relatively bland dialog, and I don't think I'd want to see them attempt another fully voiced game. Conversation topics in TES IV certainly suffered as a consequence of limited space. Additionally, not every modder has access to voice actors, and as a consequence mods that add in new dialog often feel awkward - at least in my opinion.

3) A wide array of guilds and other factions to join, no matter how grandiose or miniscule. Some people argue that Oblivion's factions had more depth, but I hardly consider "the guild is under attack by the Imperial watch/Necromancers/Blackwood Company" to be a step above or below Morrowind's factions - a step to the side I guess, but I definitely want more quests!

4) Large scale cities - especially if the next game is set in Summerset or Skyrim, where there are several metropolitan cities. For reference, perhaps the largest city could be triple or quadruple the size of Balmora. I'm not asking for anything Daggerfallesque in expansiveness, although I do think if Bethesda plays their cards right with their tech and development priorities it can be done.

5) Most importantly, I want a beautiful, hand-crafted world with everything hand-placed by the developers. Every dungeon its own story, every hamlet and inn with its own special quirks. Keep the levelled lists to a minimum, and don't just mindlessly generate the province via heightmap.

You, my good sir, have just won the internet.

Another way to allow for bigger cities s have less of them. I know what a lot of people are probably thinking: "What?! Less cities? Are you off your knocker?"

Well, you see, I feel that part of the reason all of the cities in OB were so small is because they had a bunch of them to do. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the game set in part of a province with three huge cities with lots of depth (and a lot of small villages that can be more than three houses this time around), rather than several small "cities" that make it so small towns and hamlets couldn't have much more than three houses.

This is really, really tough. But, I'll give it my best shot.

1. Make the game large again. No more cramped gameworld (and yes, Oblivion was much smaller compared to Morrowind).

2. No lazy design. Leveling everything in the world with the player svcks. Cut and paste in most dungeons svcks. If you're going to do these, make something on the scale of daggerfall. Don't use 5 voice actors for the entire thing. I'd rather have richer experiences and written dialogue anyways. I understand the consoles are driving everything now, which is sad, but this part svcks a bit. Design more monsters to supply the entire game with a variety of stuff at all levels. Take an extra year to do it right.

3. Add features, don't subtract. Levitation is awesome. Using it as the only method to find a cool area is even more awesome. Bring things like this back. Don't cut weapons. Don't make the skill system more streamlined. Complexity is great in an rpg. Find some way to rig up climbing too =D

4. Avoid awkward design blunders. For example, in oblivion, there was at least one, if not 2 vampire dens right outside the imperial city. Seriously? Like no one in the city had noticed this? This really goes along with number 1 I guess. But, this is hugely disconcerting. I will also add in that amongst the most popular mods for each of your last 2 games were creature realism mods. Having to fight a wild animal every 15 feet isn't fun in any way. Make most normal wild animals run from men like deer except in very specific circumstances. No brainer stuff. Don't make us fix the game before we can really enjoy it.

5. Move back towards Morrowind and Daggerfall in terms of design concept. Bigger, richer and less "consoly".

I left out a bunch, but that's okay. It won't be read anyways =D

Thanks for creating this world and these games. I just want to love them again.

Well said...



I read it. If you had put any more in, you might as well have posted in the Ideas & Suggestions thread!

Short + sharp = GOOD (ask any thief....)

P.S. Can't believe this thread is still going! Let's try and make the 200 post mark....

Alright, let me try my hand at this. *Cracks Knuckles*

1) More guilds. At this very moment, I'm thinking to myself: "What guild should I put my archer in... I just did the Fighter's Guild, won't fit the mage's guild, I don't want her to be an assassin or a thief... Well drat, I'm out of options!" Also, give them plenty of depth and quests so that I'm not going from "Novice" to "Supreme Commander of the World" in an hour or two.

2) Get off the mainstream. Seriously. No. Bad. :slap: I liked reading dialog. Gave conversations more depth and I didn't notice every member of every race had the same voice actor. That, and mods without voice acting didn't feel so out-of-place. More action is good, though, but make it cool to explore, too. I really had no urges to explore in Oblivion like I did in Morrowind; I just found everything so... Uninteresting. Had to mod it up to get myself to not fast travel. These games shouldn't be games that you can just breeze right on through, after all! It shouldn't matter if the average mainstream player doesn't like to read or walk. Then it just isn't the game for them.

3) More weapons & armor. On that note, I fail to see how axes are blunt weapons.

4) More interesting cities. Really, I can't think of any reasons I went to Leyawiin or Bravil, and Bruma/Anvil were only ever visited for the occasional quest. I did like Chorrol, though, probably because of Dar-Ma. But they were so small, more like small towns than actual cities. Even the Imperial City seemed a bit lacking. And, more importantly, Open Cities. I liked being able to sneak into/out of a city or seamlessly being able to run from a horde of guards directly out of the front gates without sitting through a load screen long enough for all of the guards to catch up, zone in, loiter about for a bit with three more guards and then gank me as I got through.

5) Climbing would be nice. Especially with the open cities. If you're going to wall in a city, let me climb it's wall. Or, for extra fun, climb a tree into a hidden tree house. Maybe for a quest.

EDIT: (I had to.) 6) Improved stealth. I could give a few examples... Make it easier to move bodies around so people don't find them and find out something is wrong. Hang off of/crawl along ledges and maybe pull somebody off of them. Silent instant kills that take a lot of skill and effort to pull off on the player's part. Maybe catch the falling body so it doesn't make sounds. Stuff like that. I found stealth to be lacking in Morrowind and Oblivion. Sure, maybe it sounds like Splinter Cell, but it's all the same concept, just applied differently in different times.

1- More guilds + more interactivity + more rewards, instead of "Here's a noob to follow you around and some gold every week/month." More like the rewards from Shivering Isles main quest(which needed more, for becoming a pseudo-Daedric Prince).
2- In general, more consequences as a result of things. E.g: TES:IV you saved the frelling world. Everybody pretty much says "Oh, cool." Where's all the
devoted admirers heaping you with adoration/hospitality?
3- More dynamic relationships. 0-100 reputation is nice. It really doesn't change anything if you have money. Build a relationship, reap the rewards.
4- More variety on the actual attacks. Fireball/iceball/lightning thing + touch attacks = eventually boring no matter how many hax effects you can make.
5- More mounts/usefulness of mounts. Perhaps flying mounts instead of fast travel?

1. Smarter scaling for NPC/Monsters. Have set creatures, some lower, some higher. Everything being constantly equal is so boring.
2. Add more skills/options, don't take stuff OUT. All games are doing this lately, removing instead of adding. No critics or players like this trend.
3. Make modding more accessible and easy. Modding is what has kept ES games so playable for years on end!
4. Varied landscapes. If V is set in Skyrim, don't make everything snowy. Break the map apart with different areas, and terrains.

The very special FIFTH.
5. Take ideas from mods that have been made for III+IV. Lots of mods are made because something is missing from a game that people want- so surely taking these ideas and using them is only smart.

1 - Assuming TES V is set in Skyrim, make it get hit by a meteorite. That way we'll really have a varied landscape
2 - More Khajiit sub-species.
3 - M'aiq better be in it
4 - When creating an Argonian, make it so they can all look unique. I'm tired of every single Argonian looking exactly the same, other than hairstyles. And they don't have many of those, either.
5 - No more scaling.

1. NPC AI - NO PSYCHIC GUARDS!!!
2. Animations
3. No more having to micro manage my character
4. Limit scaling - I want to poo on rats and bandit at a high level, yet still have challenging areas
5. If you don't put M'auq in it i will eat your children
6. I want a Halberd

1. (the only one i care about) Online play for 360.

i had tons of fun with oblivion roaming around killing stuff and doing quests. but i have a feeling that i would have put more than the 800 hours i have in the game if i could have been skrewing around with my friends in the process.

[quote name='Bladecutter' date='09 August 2010 - 10:03 PM' timestamp='1281413038' post='16258388']

4) . And, more importantly, Open Cities. I liked being able to sneak into/out of a city or seamlessly being able to run from a horde of guards directly out of the front gates without sitting through a load screen long enough for all of the guards to catch up, zone in, loiter about for a bit with three more guards and then gank me as I got through.

Unless you want TESV to be on 3 discs, open cities are wayyy too complicated. They don't have everything load at the same time for a reason.<-- EPIC LAG.
The only way i can think of them being able to achieve open cities is by cutting the map into smaller AUTO LOAD sections. But that would get kinda annoying anyways and wouldm't be much better than lag. ITS POSSIBLE BUT NOT PROBABLE. :slap:

Like they did with Morrowind? >_>

Not on the computer. The Open Cities mod has proved that.

I suspect open cities might have lagged when they tested it on the XBox, however. And I further suspect that that's why the game was delayed and cities put into their own cells.